The present invention relates to an optical disc recording apparatus which can form a visible image on an optical disc.
Optical disc recording apparatuses which record music data or the like onto an optical disc such as a CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) or a CD-RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) are widely used. An optical disc recording apparatus records data by illuminating an optical disc with a laser beam to form pits corresponding to the data length.
In the case where data recording is to be performed on many optical discs, it is convenient to visually recognize recorded contents of each of the optical discs. Therefore, an optical disc recording apparatus which can record a visible image such as characters in a disc area (unrecorded area) where data is not recorded is beginning to be provided. In such an optical disc recording apparatus, an unrecorded area is illuminated with a laser beam so that the illuminated portion is discolored to form a visible image such as characters and numerals.
In a related optical disc recording apparatus, however, only after all data are recorded, an unrecorded area can be determined and hence formation of a visible image is enabled. In the case where plural sets of data are additionally recorded in several discrete times (for example, the TAO method), such visible-image formation cannot be conducted even when it is requested to form a visible image in the middle of the data recording.